The Always-Set Table: Decor vs. Decorum

Dear Miss Manners:

While touring real estate open houses, a number of the dining rooms are set as if awaiting guests. Now I have a number of friends who have started this practice as decor.

Although they are not having dinner guests (and seldom use their dining rooms), there are placemats or table settings left out at all times. They sometimes continue this look into the kitchen dinette or snack bar.

Is it proper to leave your linens and dishes out as decor? It does add color to the table, but I feel that you also are collecting dust on items that might be used for dinner service at a later date.

Not only that, but it hurries any polite visitors out, on the assumption that you are getting ready for dinner, probably on behalf of more favored guests than themselves. Maybe that's the idea.

What it says to the family is even worse: We don't have time to sit down with you, and we certainly wouldn't use the good things. But here's what it would look like if we did.

So Miss Manners' ruling is: No, a phantom table setting in a lived-in house is not polite to those not invited to eat. Besides, it is ludicrous.

Dear Miss Manners:

To my chagrin, I learned that the erstwhile object of my affections has given me a lovely memento, also known as a social disease.

What is the proper way to alert him to this fact, as he will also need treatment? Must I do this in person? He is abroad for another week. My disgust is such that without your guidance, I have awful visions of denouncing his infidelity or blurting out bad puns.

Do not do that. Repeat: not.

It is not only that you want to remain a lady, even when dealing with someone who is not a gentleman. This is especially true when dealing with someone who is not a gentleman and who knows a great deal of personal information about you. Miss Manners recommends that you inform him in writing, so you are not tempted to say more than you should. E-mail will not do, because it so easily goes astray -- and can be forwarded. Also, you need to be able to tear up your first 10 drafts so that the one you send is simple, factual and decently worded.

Dear Miss Manners:

What is the proper way to thank someone for the gift of a box of stationery? Does one write a note on the stationery received as a gift? Or does one write on other, perhaps less precious, paper? If the gift is a small box of note cards, for instance, art reproductions with eight cards in the box, is it reasonable to use one of them to reply to the giver? Or do you save them for other notes?

You use the first to thank the giver. Otherwise, Miss Manners fears, the praise you give the cards will backfire by suggesting that you are going to save them for more important correspondence.

Feeling incorrect? E-mail your etiquette questions to Miss Manners (who is distraught that she cannot reply personally) atMissManners@unitedmedia.comor mail to United Media, 200 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016.

2007Judith Martin